Planned Parenthood launches $45M campaign to back Democrats in 2020

Planned Parenthood will spend $45 million on the 2020 elections, the nonprofit’s biggest electoral expenditure in its history, according to CBS News.

The money will go toward the presidential election as well as congressional and state House races, according to Planned Parenthood Votes Executive Director Jenny Lawson, who told CBS, “The stakes have never been higher.”

The Trump administration, she told CBS, “has managed to undo so much over the last three years … the fact that this summer the Supreme Court might gut Roe v. Wade is an indicator of their intention and they’ve never been so bold.”

The campaign will zero-in on nine states: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the network. The money will go into digital, TV and radio ads, canvassing, and mailers, according to CBS.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear its first abortion-related cases since President Trump appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in 2017 and 2018, respectively.

One case centers on a 2014 Louisiana measure requiring any doctor who performs abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. A decision upholding the law could make Louisiana the first state with no legal, practical access to abortion since the Roe decision.

Lawson said the organization is broadly satisfied with the Democratic field’s proposals on abortion rights.

“The Democratic candidates collectively have the boldest reproductive rights policies we’ve ever seen,” she told CBS. “Every major candidate in the 2020 elections, except for Donald Trump, has spoken out against dangerous abortion bans and many of them have actually introduced real plans to protect the reproductive rights in this country.”

The campaign, Planned Parenthood Votes, is distinct financially and structurally from the main Planned Parenthood organization that operates its clinics, according to CBS.

Opponents of abortion rights are also poised to ramp up advocacy ahead of the elections, with the Susan B. Anthony List saying in summer 2019 that it will spend $41 million to “aggressively challenge, erode, and finally, overturn Roe v. Wade.”